I Run Like A Girl

Hope you all are having lovely weeks! I have a short recap on my weekend followed by some personal talk below. Overall my weekend was kept pretty low-key outside two fun activities. In between was actually filled with some work.

Sophie and I went shopping and grabbed sushi for dinner on Saturday. Sophie just got a promotion and so we celebrated together. We had a mini-girl’s wine night afterwards too, and it was so nice to finally have some one-on-one time with Soph, since we’re usually hanging in a group together 🙂

Sunday consisted of meeting up with James, Julia and Rahul in Marin for a mountain bike ride! We also got to hang with Julia’s family, who I hadn’t seen in months, so that was a treat (I call them my surrogate west coast fam 🙂 ). It was a beautiful day in the 70’s, and we did a climb up to and around Lagunitas Lake, which was a beautiful sight.

Gestalt Haus for lunch afterwards – this place is such a gem in Fairfax. All the bikers go there after their rides 🙂

Now for the personal stuff…

As I began to write this post, it felt difficult to write about how happy and fun everything has been. I feel like I haven’t been completely honest in reflecting how I’ve been doing emotionally, and while I try and use this blog as a way to focus on the positive things in my life, I really would like to open up about some things.

If I’m honest, these past few 2+ months have been extremely difficult for me. I’ve been alluding to some “life changes” on this blog, and long story short, there’s a situation that I’m not familiar in dealing with, and it’s been causing me a lot of stress, anxiety, and loss of confidence. I’ve been spending a lot of time alone working on this, but I think that’s been counter-productive since it just feeds into my stress and I end up thinking myself into circles.

I’m glad I’ve had a lot of fun things to keep me distracted this summer, but unlike usual stressful things in my life (exams/work/boy drama), for some reason this thing has been very difficult to compartmentalize, and it’s been a huge weight in my heart. There was definitely this feeling that my life is “on hold” until this thing was solved. Almost every single day I would wake up and think: “how long is this going to last? I don’t know how long I can handle this.” The fear of being in this situation for too long was overwhelming – I even seriously considered quitting my job and travelling for a few months, but I knew deep down that would just be running away from it all…

This past weekend, I briefly saw one of my friends and he said that I was the most stressed-out he had ever seen me. Shortly after, my mom called me to check in, and everything exploded and I broke down to her about how difficult things have been. My amazing mom was an angel sent from God because as we talked, she opened my eyes to how I can’t just focus on “solving” this, but I need to have a complete change in perspective: focus on what I have to be grateful for, put my health first, be patient, and most importantly, welcome the challenge into my life and try and find balance in the meantime, because you can’t plan life and there’s really no indication of when the end is in sight.

And so, over the past few days I’ve done some soul-searching. I realized I can’t let this be my one and only focus, and I need to take active steps to find happiness and balance in other parts of my life, while still dealing with the situation. I definitely don’t have all the answers, and honestly this list is more for me to organize and document my thoughts more than anything, but I really want to use this Fall as a way to lift my spirits and recalibrate my entire life again after a stressful summer.

Things I want to do to find balance/happiness – Fall 2018

1. Stop being anti-social. I think an easy fix to raising my spirits is to start reaching out to my friends again. I’ve been pretty avoidant the past few months since I somehow convinced myself that all my free time should be spent alone dealing with this, and while that works for a lot of people, I’ve learned that that does not work for me. Getting out of my apartment, seeing loved ones, having conversations outside of this topic…all will help me get out of my head and appreciate all the love I have in my life.
2. Reach out for help. On a similar note, for the longest time I felt like I couldn’t turn to anyone about this, but it was actually James who helped me see that there are so many resources and people I can and should reach out to. People are more willing to help others than I thought, and I’m definitely going to start seeking different perspectives from others.
3. Sign up for a fall race / put health first. This is always my mom’s number one advice. This situation has definitely taken a toll on my physical health, and you really don’t have anything left after your health is gone! I’d love to sign up for a fall race (maybe a shorter trail race?) to have something to keep me accountable in staying healthy and also to have another goal to work towards.
4. Go on a trip! I decided that I want to take another solo trip next month! Seeing a different country, meeting new people, getting fresh perspectives…solo trips always do wonders for my emotional health. I’d love to go back to SE Asia since my Thailand trip in May was so wonderful…I have some other ideas too. Either way, this also gives me something to look forward to, which I desperately need.
5. Start dating again. I re-downloaded some apps again this week. 😛 I’ve definitely put my dating life on hold the past few months, but I’m hoping that going on a few dates will help me feel like I have more of a social life again. I was pretty hesitant about doing this, since I was nervous that a few bad dates might hurt my emotional health/confidence rather than help it, but at this point in my life I’ve gotten pretty good at being my own plug and not letting boys define me. So I’m excited to get back out there 🙂
6. The end is in sight. Lastly, even though there is no solid indication of when this will be over, I know that there is an end in sight. It may take a few weeks, a few months, god forbid even a few years, but I know that all hard things happen in waves.

If you’ve made it to the end of this depressing post, thank you! I know I don’t really write like this often, but blogging has always helped me work out my thoughts and I really do appreciate the openness of the blog-o-sphere for that. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week 🙂